Going with your gut, intuition, inner voice

[jba10582]

It sounds like many here are confusing emotionally driven decisions with intuition. When you use intuition, it is often a very quick, almost an instant decision that is not necessarily based on emotion or logic.

 

I believe that if one restricts themselves to only relying on logic and their physical surroundings, they are losing out. Just imagine you had access to decision making beyond your logical mind but you decided only to make ones based on your immediate surroundings, wouldn't that be a shame? Once you close your mind to this possibility, that's it.

 

This is more in line with my idea of intuition, that, it is powerful alignment or realignment of factual information with experiences and maybe even a six sense with an almost pre-knowledge of something that gives special insight or a solution to something in a profound way that seems to happen almost instantaneously, and, where things seem to work out with uttmost accuracy and precision. I've read of cases where extremely smart academics (highly rational people) have stubbornly closed off their intuitive abilities to new insights because of past publications which, if listened to, would lose credibility that had brought them a lot of esteem and respect from their past work.

[OnlyHonesty]

I don't rely on my gut feeling b/c it is entirely emotional, irrational. On the other hand, I am much more analytical and use experience. Gut feeling sounds too emotional and subjective to me.

 

Perhaps many are looking at 'gut feeling' or intuition in the scope of relationships in this thread which of course is to be expected but I will use other examples.

 

You are driving down a quiet road, your analytical skills determine that it is safe, you observe no dangers, you look around all angles and you are an experienced driver. You rely only on your physical mind as you have always done, your observation of circumstances and the reality of the environment. Now there have been times where in such scenarios, one can get intuition that tells them to watch out, slow down or stop. Logically, the road is clear and there is no reason to stop at a green light on a quiet road.

 

Intuition bases decisions far beyond the physical world we can see and I have experienced this in life. A feeling or warning when there is no logical or reason for this feeling that can be based on the immediate environment or reality. I was the passenger in a car with a friend of mine and while driving, she slowed down because she said 'the person in that car is going to do something stupid'.

 

There was no reason to think this, there driving had been fine, they weren't going to fast etc but then suddenly they swerved across us.

 

 

I simply do not buy into it, but if it helps people feel better that they have it- great. Whatever "feeling" I have comes from observation and circumstances that exist in the real world. Not something that evolves like spidey-senses.

 

Take this example, it is minor but gets the point across and is based on something that happened to me long ago.

 

You take a cycle ride into town and you lock up the bike near a well lit busy area. A few hours into your trip walking around town far from your bike, suddenly you get a 'gut feeling' that something is wrong and you know it is related to your bike. Now going by the physical environment, I am far away from my bike, I left it locked up in the same area I have always done and from a logical point of view, there is no reason for this feeling.

 

When I got back to my bike, it had been vandalized so one could argue that my intuition failed lol. However, I was able to have the time to get to a garage before it closed and they temporarily fixed it and I could get home. Now if I had only gone by my logical environment...

 

When people glorify their "gut feeling", I also sometimes wonder where it was the 10th other times they dated and were fooled, or things didn't work out. These feelings are ignored or did that same gut feeling tell them during those 10 times that things were okay until it was too late?

 

Just my 2-cents.

 

I don't know much about intuition from a dating perspective but it can work a similar way. You might meet someone that has very few red flags, a good background, polite, comes from a well known family etc. Your physical / logical mind will tell you everything is fine but then you get a 'gut feeling' that something is dangerous. To me, this is the difference.

 

Gut feeling is not emotionally driven, this is not to be confused with a 'gut feeling' that occurs at a very emotional time. The intuition is beyond emotion, beyond logic and far beyond your immediate physical environment. Like the air we breath, there is more to us than what we can see.

 

I have other examples but have to go now. I might add more later.

[Babolat]

I guess my question was more related to relationships: work, dating, family, friends, etc. Sometimes there is just a gut feeling that somethign is "off".

 

One of my best male friends, I can't 100% explain it but sometimes I feel a little anxious around him, and, I can't explain why. Something feels off at times. Other times, we click and all is well.

 

My ex gf, I had no factual data, no reason to distruct her other than perceptions, when we dated, and now that she is back, and wants to try again, my anxiety is much lower, though something just feels off, and I can't put my finder on what that is. I'll start writing a list to try to figure it out, and, it feels silly, like why am I doing this. Then I think about talking to her, and, think the same. She can't tell me whay I feel "off".

 

My female best friend, sometimes I feel 100% comfortable around her, sometimes I feel "off". Can't explain it.

 

The woman I refer to as my FWB here (was a FWB), nothing really changed as we spent time together, I ddi not learn anything about her that was a concern for me, though, at times, something just felt off when I was with her.

 

It's as if my mind is saying "something is not right here". My immediate reaction is to think "then walk away" from it. Or, I will study it, analyze it, think on it, post here on it, etc.

 

I think our personality type, having studied that more recently, shapes our intuition, and perhaps our morals and values. But, like some here have said, we need to be careful with confirmation bias. And, like some have said here, sometiems we need to shake it off, remind ourselves, though for me, that just does not work; temporarily, yeah, but "that feeling" comes back.

[Babolat]

Perhaps many are looking at 'gut feeling' or intuition in the scope of relationships in this thread which of course is to be expected but I will use other examples.

 

You are driving down a quiet road, your analytical skills determine that it is safe, you observe no dangers, you look around all angles and you are an experienced driver. You rely only on your physical mind as you have always done, your observation of circumstances and the reality of the environment. Now there have been times where in such scenarios, one can get intuition that tells them to watch out, slow down or stop. Logically, the road is clear and there is no reason to stop at a green light on a quiet road.

 

Intuition bases decisions far beyond the physical world we can see and I have experienced this in life. A feeling or warning when there is no logical or reason for this feeling that can be based on the immediate environment or reality. I was the passenger in a car with a friend of mine and while driving, she slowed down because she said 'the person in that car is going to do something stupid'.

 

There was no reason to think this, there driving had been fine, they weren't going to fast etc but then suddenly they swerved across us.

 

 

 

 

Take this example, it is minor but gets the point across and is based on something that happened to me long ago.

 

You take a cycle ride into town and you lock up the bike near a well lit busy area. A few hours into your trip walking around town far from your bike, suddenly you get a 'gut feeling' that something is wrong and you know it is related to your bike. Now going by the physical environment, I am far away from my bike, I left it locked up in the same area I have always done and from a logical point of view, there is no reason for this feeling.

 

When I got back to my bike, it had been vandalized so one could argue that my intuition failed lol. However, I was able to have the time to get to a garage before it closed and they temporarily fixed it and I could get home. Now if I had only gone by my logical environment...

 

 

 

I don't know much about intuition from a dating perspective but it can work a similar way. You might meet someone that has very few red flags, a good background, polite, comes from a well known family etc. Your physical / logical mind will tell you everything is fine but then you get a 'gut feeling' that something is dangerous. To me, this is the difference.

 

Gut feeling is not emotionally driven, this is not to be confused with a 'gut feeling' that occurs at a very emotional time. The intuition is beyond emotion, beyond logic and far beyond your immediate physical environment. Like the air we breath, there is more to us than what we can see.

 

I have other examples but have to go now. I might add more later.

 

I like your comments here.

 

So, when in a relationship, dating, work, friend, other, and you feel somethignis "off", what do we call that? If it's not based on raw data, how do you address it? If it's based on perception, experiences, things that remind you of something in the past, what do we do? If you ask questions, get the "right" answers, yet you still feel something is "off", then what?

[emva07]

it is data....it's mental data....whether it comes from personal experiences, experiences of others you know, experiences you hear about on the news, etc etc.

 

sayings, proverbs, Aesop fables, etc etc don't come from nowhere, humans have been the same give or take since the dawn of time.

 

You meet a new coworker that you realize loves getting information out of you but also talks about others.....chances are you see that as a red flag that she will do that about you.

 

Your SO and you have a certain kind of relationship all of a sudden it changes, why? something is off.

 

My teacher doesn't come to class one day, why? Something is off.

 

My mom always comes home from work by 8 at the latest, it's 9 now, why isn't she home, is she safe?

 

etc, etc.

 

It's not quantitative data, but it's still data.

[MissBee]

We here this a lot in our life, on LS, etc "Listen to your gut", "Go with your intuition, your inner voice".

 

Me, personally, I am very introspective, I feel things, I read people well, I pick up on energy, vibes, etc. Sometimes I like it, and, well, sometimes I do not. I am also a logical, analytical, concrete kind of person; I need data if you will. I need to "see it" too. So I battle myself, all the time.

 

I'm curuous to hear stories & opinions on what this means to you, how often do you listen to your gut, how often is it right, what you think intuition is, how do "we know", etc. Have you ever made a decsion, on, gut feeling alone, with nothing to really support it? If you did, were you right?

 

Sometimes I wonder if past experiences cause us to "feel something" when we think we "see something". Is that a gut feeling, or a trust issue inside of us, or what?

 

Is "gut felling" a collection of life experiences? Are some of us more in tune to our "gut feeling", then others?

 

I am logical and analytical and also intuitive. I've also done the battle, where I have a gut feeling (which could logically come from comprised experiences) and talk myself out of it, only to end up kicking myself later.The hardest ones for me are when I feel like I have NO "evidence" whatsoever and feel I need it...but I've learned overtime that if alarm bells are going off or I have an inkling, pay attention! I don't need to understand the mechanism of how and why this works necessarily, I just know it does.

 

For me personally my gut feeling hasn't been wrong. I have had more cases where I talked myself out of how I felt and ended up regretting it or what I felt came to pass than I've had where I followed my gut and my gut was wrong.

 

It's always esp weird when the feeling I get is about other people I know, as I never want to tell them and often don't as I sometimes have no evidence for it and also don't want to offend them. I often brush it off but it ALWAYS comes to pass why I felt uneasy.

 

One of the most uncanny things with regards to that happened to me last year. A friend of mine started dating this guy. We were friends during college and she still lived in the city we went to college in and I was living in another city for grad school, so we hadn't seen each other in a while and weren't as close as we were in college. Another mutual friend called me and was updating me on stuff with our friends and mentioned this friend, call her Jane, was dating a new guy for about 3 months and was moving to another state with him. The friend telling me this didn't tell me much about the guy except that my friend met him on a cruise or something. I was a bit surprised by this and thought that was weird and kinda foolish but didn't think too much about it. I however got on FB later and saw her in several pictures with this man, who was fairly attractive but for some reason I immediately thought "THIS GUY IS CRAZY!" My feelings were so strong about that but I was like Bee, calm down. You don't know this man at all. So I brushed it off. But for some reason I kept feeling like it was a bad idea for her to move with him, not just because she barely knew him, but because I kept feeling something was wrong with him...although I had NO evidence for it. I never met him, she didn't tell me about him personally, I didn't know much about him.

 

Anyway, long story short: I come home for the holidays, turns out Jane broke up with the guy and moved back to our city and she invited me to lunch with the other friend who told me about her moving. At lunch she starts talking about the breakup and she told me: "Bee....I had to get out of that relationship, he was crazy!" I was like waiit what??? Turns out he was in the army, suffers from PTSD and so will literally have episodes and one night he pulled a gun on her! :eek: I didn't know what to say. I finally told her that it was so bizarre because I had never met him, never heard any stories about him, I just looked at pictures of them together and alarms started ringing and the first thing I thought was that he was crazy. And so said, so done! So that for me is but one of the times where I had no evidence besides a strong feeling and I brush it off then later it all makes sense why I had such a strong feeling.

[Under The Radar]

I am logical and analytical and also intuitive. I've also done the battle, where I have a gut feeling (which could logically come from comprised experiences) and talk myself out of it, only to end up kicking myself later.The hardest ones for me are when I feel like I have NO "evidence" whatsoever and feel I need it...but I've learned overtime that if alarm bells are going off or I have an inkling, pay attention! I don't need to understand the mechanism of how and why this works necessarily, I just know it does.

 

For me personally my gut feeling hasn't been wrong. I have had more cases where I talked myself out of how I felt and ended up regretting it or what I felt came to pass than I've had where I followed my gut and my gut was wrong.

 

It's always esp weird when the feeling I get is about other people I know, as I never want to tell them and often don't as I sometimes have no evidence for it and also don't want to offend them. I often brush it off but it ALWAYS comes to pass why I felt uneasy.

 

One of the most uncanny things with regards to that happened to me last year. A friend of mine started dating this guy. We were friends during college and she still lived in the city we went to college in and I was living in another city for grad school, so we hadn't seen each other in a while and weren't as close as we were in college. Another mutual friend called me and was updating me on stuff with our friends and mentioned this friend, call her Jane, was dating a new guy for about 3 months and was moving to another state with him. The friend telling me this didn't tell me much about the guy except that my friend met him on a cruise or something. I was a bit surprised by this and thought that was weird and kinda foolish but didn't think too much about it. I however got on FB later and saw her in several pictures with this man, who was fairly attractive but for some reason I immediately thought "THIS GUY IS CRAZY!" My feelings were so strong about that but I was like Bee, calm down. You don't know this man at all. So I brushed it off. But for some reason I kept feeling like it was a bad idea for her to move with him, not just because she barely knew him, but because I kept feeling something was wrong with him...although I had NO evidence for it. I never met him, she didn't tell me about him personally, I didn't know much about him.

 

Anyway, long story short: I come home for the holidays, turns out Jane broke up with the guy and moved back to our city and she invited me to lunch with the other friend who told me about her moving. At lunch she starts talking about the breakup and she told me: "Bee....I had to get out of that relationship, he was crazy!" I was like waiit what??? Turns out he was in the army, suffers from PTSD and so will literally have episodes and one night he pulled a gun on her! :eek: I didn't know what to say. I finally told her that it was so bizarre because I had never met him, never heard any stories about him, I just looked at pictures of them together and alarms started ringing and the first thing I thought was that he was crazy. And so said, so done! So that for me is but one of the times where I had no evidence besides a strong feeling and I brush it off then later it all makes sense why I had such a strong feeling.

 

Is your intuition for rent?

 

I think some of us could use a little bit of that as we venture out into the craziness of the dating world.

 

It's never a bad thing to have a professional psychic in your pocket.

Edited December 18, 2013 by Training Revelations

[Babolat]

It's never a bad thing to have a professional psychic in your pocket.

 

Agreed!

 

I am very much into psychic, energy, readings and the like. I believe there is something to it. I have been told I have it in me.

 

Ironically, my ex gf use to do readings before we met (not for money, as a hobby). Did one on me once, and, was spot on. Her ability to read me, is, almost scary. It's probably part of my attraction to her.

 

I will have lunch with one of my female friends who is VERY psychic (not a professional though), when I am struggling with something, and I always walk away with a clearer mind.

[Shepp]

I trust my gut a lot in life.

 

I can better deal with making a mistake which could of been avoided if id thought things through more than I can one which could of been avoided if id listened to what I knew deep down in my gut.

 

I think our brains have more power than we know, I think that your gut feeling comes from that.

 

But then I was brought up to trust my gut though, my granddad always used to tell me "You've got a good heart, trust it and it won't take you far wrong'

 

 

 

My girlfriend, I know there's always been people of the feeling that i'm somewhat blind when it comes to her, that I'm walking into trouble...but I know me and her are right - I can feel it in my gut, and that's all I need, I don't need her to have the perfect relationship history or to be perfect in anyway, I feel it in my gut and that makes her perfect for me.

[OnlyHonesty]

I like your comments here.

 

So, when in a relationship, dating, work, friend, other, and you feel somethignis "off", what do we call that? If it's not based on raw data, how do you address it? If it's based on perception, experiences, things that remind you of something in the past, what do we do? If you ask questions, get the "right" answers, yet you still feel something is "off", then what?

 

 

I notice that emva07calls this mental data and in some cases it may be that. However, I don't think this applies to all cases of 'gut feeling' or intuition, particularly when you look at examples of intuition on roads, warnings before danger etc.

 

In relationships perhaps there is more chance of it being mental data but intuition as a whole, cannot be explained by 'mental' data, not entirely anyway.

 

For example, there was a new woman who joined at work. I had never spoken to her before, she looked friendly enough, well dressed, attractive and was quite cheerful. I didn't even know her name and wasn't anywhere near her but as soon as I saw her in the distance, something told me that I should be careful. Something was telling me that she was going to cause lots of problems for everyone.

 

The next day when I came into work, there was a completely new system, it made the job more difficult for many, it was less efficient and everyone knew it wouldn't work. Some how she had convinced the management to change to this system. She seemed to be giving managers orders, was rude to people and created a lot of problems in general. After a few days I had to tell her off for causing me problems in my job. After that, she was fine and never created any problems again.

 

I think that depending on the circumstances, you can just see this sort of thing as an early warning. It might make you change how you handle a situation or be more careful etc.

[MissBee]

Is your intuition for rent?

 

I think some of us could use a little bit of that as we venture out into the craziness of the dating world.

 

It's never a bad thing to have a professional psychic in your pocket.

 

 

I often get flashes of insight, feelings or dreams about things and many times I will brush it off only to have it come to pass later. I received a psychic reading once and the woman scolded me and said I was someone who receives intuitive messages but I often ignore them or try to reason them away....I couldn't even say anything, she was right.

 

But I'm better about it now, still not 100% trusting, but have had too many uncanny hunches out of thin air that ended up being on the money that it's easier for me to trust my gut now based on its track record.

[GoreSP]

Personally, I have been f*cked over by my gut feeling many, many, many times.

But I was never as wrong and I was never as f*cked over than when I went with my common sense - especially when dealing with people.

[Got it]

I am a very analytical person so follow facts and my gut. It is normally right.

 

That and Murphy's Law, it isn't ever wrong either.

[Elliotte]

Your gut instinct is there as a survival mechanism to make snap "in-the-moment" decisions. It's a great asset to have in order to get small things done quick and draws from valuable experiences. I have had a hard time letting my gut do that because I tend to overthink every decision, and am slowly learning to trust my gut with making small day-to day decisions.

 

However, it is horrible for making long term decisions. When it comes to big decisions that will have long lasting effects, I take my time and try to think analytically, mustering as much logic, research, differing perspectives and facts as I can in order to move forward. Often times it means swallowing down some of that emotion that goes with gut insincts, which is difficult as well, but deconstructing why you are feeling a certain way about a big decision, and whether or not that emotion is holding you back from making a step forward, is great way to improve your life.

[Targetlock]

my gut instincts and intuitions are usually spot-on except in relationships and romance where my emotions seem to take over and i quickly jump to conclusions or get ahead of myself with my thoughts and feelings.

i'm also very logical and analytical but not that intuitive.

[jba10582]

True intuition is very fascinating gift that some people seem to have more often than others, and, I may now try to find ways to learn to develop more of these flashes of insight, that, a lot of people seem to have at some points in their life.